The neighbors looked at me a bit funny as I marked out distances with chalk and a tape measure on the front sidewalk. One large block of wood with a hook, and a large paver on it, held the made up ends of the lines as I stretched them out and bent the ends to mark the distance.
Here's a picture of a fixture I use. The drums are glued onto the board so that one wrap around is exactly 5 feet*. The thing has gotten more elaborate with age, but in the form pictured it had a peg driven into the wood at the 6 inch mark. I put an end on a line, wrap it around the fixture the correct number of times**, then finish the other end on the peg again. For lines that are not exact multiples of five feet I have driven in more pegs.
Drums are PVC sewer pipe. The board is a leftover bit of 1x6 from a remodel.
The two advantages are that you can do it at your bench, and you don't pick up any dirt by measuring outside. Given that I live in a rainy area, these are big advantages.
* I'm an engineer, so I figured out where to put them by lots of careful measurement and calculation. But before I mixed the glue I turned into a technician, so I measured my work, found it off, and just glued things down based on a tape measure wrapped around the drums.
** Well, usually. Sometimes I end up with a set of lines where one is five feet too long or too short.